Today the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the display of a ten-foot-tall Ten Commandment monument on Texas state capitol grounds. Which reminds me of a story.

It�€™s a story out of the Zen Buddhist tradition in which a master finds a young monk lost in adoration of a priceless and beautiful statue of the Buddha. In this story, the master found a stick and smashed the statue to save the student from the error of idolatry.

Now, I have doubts about this story. I think it�€™s more likely that the master took up a stick and gave the monk a few smacks in the head with it. I suppose I should report the story the way it was told to me, however. There�€™s another story I like better, in which a monk working in a monastery kitchen saw the Bodhisattva Manjusri �€“ something like the patron saint of wisdom — rise up out of a cooking pot to expound on the teachings of the Buddha. The monk beat the Bodhisattva back into the pot with a spoon and slammed down the lid. Zennies take a dim view of apparitions.

My point, though, is that Christians seem to hold a definition of idolatry that is out of sync with most other religions. Christians tend to think of idolatry as the worship of false gods. The more universal definition is using any image as an object of worship. And by this definition, you have to wonder if fundies have made the Ten Commandments into an idol.

You might remember that one of the Ten Cs (Number 4, on this list) forbids the faithful to �€œmake unto thee any graven image.�€� The text actually says not to make graven images of anything. Both Judaism and Islam forbid making likenesses of God, and Islam takes this further by forbidding likenesses of humans or animals (although pure ornamentation is fine). I understand that Judaism also forbids speaking or writing the name of God. This is, I think, wise. Giving God a name and a form creates parameters. A being both omnipotent and omniscient shouldn�€™t have parameters.

Christians, however, tend to interpret the graven image prohibition loosely as a restriction on making statues for the purpose of worshiping them, although the Amish take it as far as forbidding photography.

Buddhism, which is either pantheistic or nontheistic, has a different take on idolatry. The Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh considers idolatry to be any belief or concept that binds you. The first of his Fourteen Precepts of Engaged Buddhism is, �€œDo not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.�€� Buddhism considers all teachings to be provisional and all cognitive understanding to be flawed. The perfection of wisdom is beyond description and human imagination. Therefore, binding oneself by believing in dogmas and doctrines gets in the way of realizing enlightenment.

You can see why the old master smashed the statue (or the student).

For years, fundamentalist Christians have been attempting an end run around the graven image rule by making the Ten Commandments themselves into an object of worship. But at the same time, they skirt the First Amendment by claiming the Ten Commandments isn’t specifically religious at all. Attorney Andrew Cohen writes,

In the Kentucky case, officials in two counties have tried for years to figure out a way to keep public their Commandments’ display. When they first posted it, and were challenged, they argued that the display did not violate the Establishment Clause because the commandments represented “the inseparable connection between the ethical conduct of [Kentucky’s] legislative body and the Christian principles which permeate our society and its institutions.” Sensing correctly that this argument wasn’t going to cut it, the counties then tried to surround their Commandments displays with other displays that included references to God and religion.

A trial judge ruled that the counties were illegally endorsing religion by “narrowly” tailoring [their] selection of foundational documents to incorporate only those with specific references to Christianity�€�” The counties tried a third time, this time surrounding the Ten Commandments with less religious (and more patriotic displays), but by then it was too late. The courts had given up believing that the efforts by the counties were anything but a way to keep the Ten Commandments in the middle of public life.

Fundies like to argue that the Ten Cs deserve a special place of honor because, um, the nation�€™s legal system is based on it. Not really. First, the Ten Cs were not the first written code of law. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, very likely predates Mosaic Law. The Exodus probably began about 1450 BC, and Hammurabi is thought to have lived sometime between 2100 and 1600 BC, give or take. Second, early American law was based on British law, which traces its ancestry to the law of the Roman Empire.

The other claim is that this country was somehow founded on the Ten Cs, which is absurd. The Constitution, for example, makes no mention of God or the Ten Cs at all. This was not an oversight.

It is apparent that the real reason for putting up big displays or monuments of the Ten Cs on public property is to establish taxpayer-supported graven images that everyone is supposed to at least respect, if not worship.

Cohen continues,

The Texas case was not nearly as long and winding on its path to the Supreme Court. The display in Texas has been standing for over 40 years and is now a part of a larger display that is more patriotic than religious. Indeed, Texas says that the whole display area is akin to an outdoor museum, like the National Mall in Washington, so that whatever religious impact the Commandments display offer is muted both by the space of the outdoors and the diffusion with other displays.

Moreover, unlike the Kentucky kafuffle, the Commandment display in Texas seems to have a built-in secular purpose that might protect it from First Amendment meddling. It was initially posted as an honor to the Fraternal Order of Eagles, its donor, as a monument to its work against juvenile delinquency, although for the life of me, beyond the Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father part, I cannot see the link between juvenile delinquency and the Commandments. “There is no secular purpose,” says the brief challenging the Texas Commandments, “in placing on government property a monument declaring: ‘I AM the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make thyself any graven image. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.’”

One has to be seriously delusional not to recognize the Ten Commandments as a religious text. However, Mr. Cohen continues, they might be viewed as secular if we deny they have any particular religious power. He writes,

�€� perhaps over time they have become what the law recognizes as “ceremonial deism;” as watered down as the phrase “In God We Trust” on our money or the invocation “God Save This Honorable Court” in halls of justice.

The choice facing the fundies is that they either have to keep their graven images to themselves or, to place them on public property, they have to acknowledge the Ten Commandments have no particular meaning. I wonder what Moses would say about that.

(Cross posted to The Mahablog)